Sri, who had been about to leave, stopped in his tracks.
A great mathematician?
Me?
At some point, Seoha had become able to recognize the magnitude of other people’s talents.
Just as a grandmaster of baduk could see through an opponent’s skill at once after playing only a few stones with a relatively weaker player, Seoha could sense Sri’s outstanding mathematical talent in each and every way he wrote code and arranged formulas.
“No. I’m not that kind of person.”
He was grateful for the generous assessment, but Sri could not agree with Seoha’s words.
What was a born mathematician?
Wasn’t the perfect example of that question standing right before his eyes?
Mathematical intuition.
Outstanding computational ability.
The insight to draw principles from phenomena.
All of these were abilities that any exceptional mathematician ought to possess. But the truly important virtues were not such things.
‘I’m rotten.’
Those who escaped the secular world and pursued only truth.
Seeing him up close, Sri could tell for certain. Fame and reward were secondary matters to Seoha.
Even if the world failed to recognize his achievements, he would not care in the slightest.
People for whom taking one step closer to the truth was enough.
Tears welled in his eyes.
Every time Sri saw that side of Seoha, he keenly felt the distance between them.
He worried about his livelihood, calculated his results, and constantly had to weigh whether his time had been wasted.
To Sri, mathematics was the only weapon that could free him from his wretched reality.
“What are you so afraid of?”
Seoha asked, looking at Sri.
Sri took a step back, as if trying to put distance between himself and Seoha.
‘Afraid?’
Sri looked into his own heart. And then he realized.
‘I see.’
His own heart was filled with impurities called greed and anxiety. Seoha, on the other hand, was nothing but a supremely pure mathematical soul.
Sri was afraid that he would contaminate Seoha.
Sri lowered his head.
“Your mathematics is pure. But my head is full of nothing but desire. And on top of that, I lack ability. I’m not someone who will be of help to you or the team.”
Sri clenched his fist tightly.
Seoha looked at him silently for a moment.
Then he slowly opened his mouth.
“Sri.”
“Yes?”
“Why do you think I’m doing mathematics?”
At the sudden question, Sri raised his head.
“That’s… isn’t it to pursue truth?”
Seoha put on a playful expression.
“Nope. It’s just because mathematics is fun.”
“What?”
“I don’t have any grand reason like truth or enlightenment. I just feel bad when I see a problem I can’t solve, and my heart races when I see a beautiful proof.
In that sense, wouldn’t that make me a terrible egoist who only chases after personal pleasure?”
Sri shook his head.
“That’s not how it looks to me. The decisions you make are always far removed from personal advancement. Unlike me…”
“What’s wrong with pursuing profit?”
“What?”
“Don’t tell me you think you’re too worldly. Sri, you’re idealizing me too much. I’m not that noble a person.”
“But…”
“The reason I look that way is probably because I don’t need to pursue profit. If I urgently needed money like you do, I would have agonized over the same things.
Even the saints of mathematics were no different. Isn’t that because all of us are human?”
“Do you really think that?”
Seoha nodded.
“Newton was quite obsessed with money. His passion for alchemy doesn’t look pure to me. He really liked shiny things, you know? You can tell just from the fact that he served as Warden of the Royal Mint.
Gauss also spent his entire life working only at stable jobs. He was extremely wary of having his research interrupted for economic reasons.
If the book my mom wrote hadn’t sold well, I wouldn’t be able to take things this easy either.”
“Th-then.”
“What you call purity, in a way, might be a privilege that only people with nothing to worry about can enjoy.
If anything, you’re a hundred times purer than they were, Sri. Even in such a difficult situation, you decided to follow me. So stop thinking useless thoughts now.”
Seoha did not think greed was evil.
Would the priests of Pythagoras’s era have been without desire? The reason they were a secret society was not because they were persecuted. At the base of their thinking lay the desire to monopolize the secrets of the universe. In the history of mathematics he had read, there was not a single page made up of purity alone.
“Still, it’s true that I haven’t been of much help to the team. No matter how I think about it, I seem to lack talent.”
“Huh?”
Seoha looked at Sri with a dumbfounded expression.
He was certain Sri was India’s greatest talent.
Sri claimed he had merely transcribed formulas into code, but most mathematicians would take ages just to understand the equations Seoha wrote down.
Sri read the structure of equations and instinctively found where calculations would bottleneck in the transformation process, and which terms could disappear.
“You are an extremely rare talent who can preserve the mathematical rigor I create while also ensuring programming efficiency.”
“I am?”
As if frustrated, Seoha let out a sigh.
This was because Sri’s mathematical experience was too shallow. The only mathematicians he had seen in his life were the members of Team Apex. For him, who had yet to establish his identity as a mathematician, there was no standard by which he could gauge where he stood. On top of that, the first problem he had dug into was a decades-old unsolved problem in the history of mathematics.
Because he had been thrown into an extreme situation from the very beginning, he had never even had the chance to feel that he was special.
“This won’t do. Sri, I think you need some mental reprogramming. Why do you think you’re inferior to Theo or Sujeong?”
“Huh? Of course I’m inferior to them. Their publication records, their Logia rankings…”
Seoha narrowed his eyes, then took his phone from his pocket.
When he opened the app, Logia’s main page, which had started its mobile service, appeared. Seoha clicked the ranking tab.
“Huh?”
Was it because he had not logged in for a while?
Seoha had disappeared from the revamped rankings. His gaze moved toward the top of the screen.
A statue had been added to the very top of the page. A man sat on a throne with a solemn expression, wearing a golden crown. But the statue’s face looked strangely familiar.
“Don’t tell me that’s me?”
When he clicked the statue, a text box appeared.
[The eternal ruler of the continent of Logia, Seoha Yu, stands at the summit of the continent with abilities that have surpassed human limits. He shall be watching over everyone from here.]
Pfft!
Sri could not hold back his laughter and covered his mouth with his hand.
“…”
Why was the embarrassment his to bear?
Seoha’s face turned red.
It was a countermeasure the operators had come up with out of concern that his overwhelming score would dampen users’ desire to climb the rankings.
“First place is still Theo.”
No matter how busy he was, Theo logged in once a week to solve problems.
On the other hand, Sujeong and Sri were not that obsessed with their Logia rankings.
[Rank 19 : Sujeong Lim]
.
.
[Rank 27 : Srinivasa Krishnan]
The window had been simplified.
“I’m rank 27.”
Sri’s expression turned gloomy.
Seoha did not like Sri’s lack of confidence.
He scanned the screen once, then bit his lip as if he had made up his mind. What Sri needed right now was not comfort. He needed an environment where he had no choice but to prove himself, and a powerful stimulus that would awaken the competitive spirit sleeping inside him. Seoha decided to scrap the growth plan he had prepared for Sri.
Without a word, he took out a sheet of A3 paper and began writing large letters on it with a marker.
Sssrk.
[Team APEX Lab: Entry prohibited for anyone ranked 5th or below on Logia]
- Starting from the 1st of next month.
- Anyone ranked 4th or above is welcome at any time.
Holding the paper, Seoha strode out the door.
“S-Seoha? What are you doing right now?”
The flustered Sri hurried after him. But instead of answering, Seoha posted the notice on the laboratory door and secured it firmly with tape.
Click.
After taking a photo, he nodded with a satisfied expression and logged onto social media.
“Mm! Nice.”
His fingers moved busily.
Seoha almost never posted anything, but there were quite a few people following his account.
No sooner had the post gone up than the mathematics community was turned upside down.
[Seoha Yu: This is Team Apex’s new security policy.]
- If you don’t have the skills, don’t even cross the threshold of the lab. Entry permitted from Logia rank 4 and above lolololol
└Seoha Yu’s finally showing his true colors. Look at that personality lololol
└Isn’t the cutoff way too high?
└Ahh! He’s allowed to do this. He was promoted to ruler of Logia, after all.
└So everyone except Theo gets kicked out? They might actually have to pack their bags.
└Since he wrote it publicly like this, if they’re outside the ranking, they won’t be able to just laugh it off, will they?
└But isn’t this basically a declaration that he’ll accept anyone up to 4th place as a team member? Is this the Eldorado of the mathematics world?
└Huh? Is that what it means?
└Why does this look like he’s targeting someone to me? You know, especially that one guy. He wants to kick him out but doesn’t have an excuse… maybe?
The corners of Seoha’s mouth rose as he read the comments. He held out his phone to Sri, who was standing there blankly.
“The response is really heated. There are a lot of people worried about you too, Sri.”
“Seoha! This is too…”
“Why? You were going to leave anyway, but you don’t like this method?”
The playfulness vanished completely from Seoha’s eyes.
Sri felt a pressure as though his heart were being squeezed.
“At this rate, you won’t be able to come starting next month anyway.”
He knew very well.
He knew why Seoha was doing this. But he could not help the hurt and resentment surging up in his chest.
No matter how he thought about it, he could not accept an ending like this. When he raised his head, Seoha spoke.
“Purity, impurity of motive, a mathematician’s DNA—let’s set those things aside for a moment. Shall we think only about skill? Logia actually gives proper problems, more than you’d expect. So the rankings are fairly reliable too.
Your highest rank was 5th, right?”
Sri nodded.
But Sri knew well that it was an inflated rank. Unless they were an oddball like Theo, there was no reason for real experts to take it seriously.
However, things were different now.
[Yu Seoha’s post is essentially an open tryout announcement for Team Apex.]
- How much are they getting from New York City as a success fee this time? Didn’t the team also file a lot of patents?
└This might lead to a lawsuit later.
└Totally possible. Some restaurant owner once promised to give an excellent employee a car, then tried to call it an April Fool’s joke. In the end, the ruling said he had to keep the promise.
Seoha had offered the rankers sufficient compensation.
A fierceness that had never been there before appeared in Sri’s eyes. Its source was neither anger nor hurt, but a feeling unfamiliar to him: competitiveness.
“I’ll be going. I want to be alone somewhere quiet.”
Seoha silently watched Sri leave.
It had been an impulsive act, but he did not regret it. That was because he could sense a desire to win in Sri’s retreating back.
If Sri made up his mind and devoted himself only to mathematics, how far could he go? Seoha wanted to see the limits of his talent.
* * *
The next day, Theo and Sujeong, who had come to work at the lab, stopped in front of the door. Both of their gazes turned at the same time toward the crude notice posted on it.
[Team APEX Lab: Entry prohibited for anyone ranked 5th or below on Logia]
“I guess I can just go in.”
Theo shrugged and walked inside as if it were nothing.
Sujeong’s hands trembled with anger. Then, before she knew it, she shouted.
“Yu Seoha!”
For Sujeong, who did not diligently follow online communities or Logia, it was a situation that was more than enough to cause a misunderstanding.